Irreparable
by Skye Maxwell
Summary: He understands how she thinks, knows how she falls apart, knows how to put her back together… but not everything can be fixed.


His eyes flutter open, and he finds that his chin is resting on top of a muss of dark hair. His throat is pressed uncomfortably against the side of her head, and he assumes that this contributed to the dream he had just had.

He had been underwater and was not able to breathe properly.

_Why was he underwater? _

That's right, _she _had pushed him off the dock. She, dancing and laughing like a nymph, had pushed him into the water, and now he was losing oxygen and fighting to get back up to her.

Just as he was about to surface in this suffocating dream of his, he woke up to find himself sitting next to her with a protective arm around her middle.

He gently moves his head away from the still-sleeping girl, taking a few deep breaths for good measure. When he is sure that he can breathe okay, he gives her a stern look for doing such a thing to him. Then he remembers that it had just been a dream.

Still, he wants revenge.

Resolved to take her breath away as she had taken his, he presses his lips firmly to hers.

She does not wake up right away, instead incorporating the feel of his kiss into her own dream, recreating his image in her head.

It is not until he pulls her closer that she wakes with a shock, taking in a sudden breath through her nose.

He smiles mischievously as he pulls away, but his smile begins to fade as she starts breathing erratically, nearly hyperventilating.

She looks around herself with wild eyes and then latches onto his face. She raises a hand and pats his cheek a few times to make sure he is real, that she is in reality, and when she is satisfied, she throws her arms around him and collapses onto him.

"Annie?" he asks lightly.

She feels that maybe she should explain herself, but she just needs to cling to him silently for another moment, just in case…

"I was dreaming… was underwater…" she finally says in disjointed sentences. "Underwater and drowned… washed up, I washed up on the shore, and I… I was dead? Dying. Dying, then Finnick came… _you_ came, and then, then you resuscitated me, and I was… alive? Awake. I was awake. You saved me, and I woke up," she finishes, piecing her thoughts together.

"I'm sorry," he responds seriously, hugging her closer.

_Sorry for everything._

"Sorry? No, no. No… don't be sorry," she worriedly says into his shoulder. "Don't be sorry! Don't have regrets. Don't be sorry about me… _please._"

She is always afraid that he will realize just how broken she is, that she is _irreparable_…

Quickly following where her mind has gone, he quickly assures her, "No, Annie, I'm not sorry about you. There has never been a second when I regretted you."

He understands how she thinks, knows how she falls apart, knows how to put her back together…

"Don't ever," she whispers incompletely, closing her eyes.

_Don't ever be sorry. Don't ever forget. Don't ever leave. _

"I won't," he says, and as vague as it is, it is all the promise she needs.

He knows that she knows he is broken, but he wonders if she can see just how broken he is, how parts of him can never be fixed.

After a while, he says, "You know, I dreamed I was drowning too, Annie."

When he says her name, she lifts her head. She hopes he will say her name again, because she likes to see his face when he says it.

"You did?" she asks.

"I did. A certain little nymph pushed me off of a dock," he says, his eyes sparkling as he brings his face close to hers.

It takes her a second to realize that he is referring to her.

"Me?" she asks anyways.

He nods. She almost opens her mouth to apologize, but he gives her a look that says, "Don't ever."

And then he smiles, and she almost remembers how to smile too.

She wants to go to a dock and push him off. Just to see him smile.

She knows it doesn't make sense. She doesn't care. She can't.

He softly says her name.

_Annie._

She watches it pass his lips, absorbed in how it looks, how it sounds.

She remembers how to smile now.

* * *

**This is a bit... well, disjointed, but purposely so. Please review if you could, and thanks for reading!**


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